Meet Sveta, Pussy Riot’s perky, pro-Putin antithesis

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In the NYT, a piece by Sophia Kishkovsky on Svetlana Kuritsyna, "the very antithesis" of the imprisoned protest-art group Pussy Riot. Sveta is described as "a disarmingly direct, red-cheeked, 20-year-old Putin supporter from an impoverished rural region" who stands out "for her very normality and has become an accidental celebrity after an innocent, and somewhat inarticulate, video interview in which she glowingly praised Mr. Putin." The clip became a meme, with more than 2 million YouTube views, she now has her own reality show.

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The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab (previously) is one of the world’s leading research centers for cybersecurity analysis, and they are the first port of call for many civil society groups when they are targeted by governments and cyber-militias.

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The Soviet Union, for which Putin was a hard working servant, was very good at training the little people at being obedient little serfs. Their draconian measures were even better than the Czar’s. Sadly, Putin shows more solidarity with Stalin, than the October Revolution. His greatest fear is that the Russian people ever learn to think for themselves.

The international propaganda campaign against Putin did not originate in Russia, nor with the Russian liberals being played upon by some American conservatives making covert war upon he, they, and the public of the western hemisphere who think the way our western media propaganda tell us to, like a bunch of cattle.

America is no more democratic than Russia or any other nuclear armed state. Just think about that a little bit, next time you are reading bad western press about Putin, such as started appearing in our western media after George’s dad refused to cease America’s aggressions at Kennebunkport summit in 2007.

Svetlana Kuritsyna is a patriotic Russian, untwisted by western hemisphere covert war propaganda and “social media operations”, and her view, which some call naive, is merely uncontaminated by western information warfare aggressions Putin has spoken about through the course of the continuing covert international war of terror, which Obama has been striving to rescue America from in the face of it’s continuing blow-back, and international monetary crisis.

Any time the post starts off with talk of international conspiracy it’s obvious that you’re way past the usual political duality bullshit.

the part that sent off alarm bells was:

Svetlana Kuritsyna is a patriotic Russian, untwisted by western hemisphere covert war propaganda and “social media operations”, and her view, which some call naive, is merely uncontaminated by western information warfare aggressions

When someone starts talking about contamination/purity I start getting nervous.

To the other commenter, I am not a Russian defender, I am a defender of the truth, and am witness to those things I clarified for the benefit of all of us who have been subjected to the exploits of the propaganda system that George Jr. announced in 2001, which continues against all people. I am just suggesting to fellow westerners to not be so easily led about by propaganda where such negative propaganda does not just “spontaneously” appear in all western mass media outlets out of nowhere all at the same time, and has been a coordinated and unprovoked covert military assault upon all Russians, and Russia’s sovereignty, in the course of continuing aggressions by some parties in some countries who do not know when to cease aggressions.

Take a look in the mirror. When it comes to propaganda, the USA beats all hands down and makes Goebbels and Putin look like amateurs. Having watched your recent election, I’ll second that your democracy is a joke. You are ruled by oligarchs just like the Russians. But you have less of an excuse.

Please explain what about the recent election makes you think US democracy is a joke. While there is a fair amount of “propaganda” in the US, it is mainly generated by private media rather than a government department like Goebbel’s — and it clearly shows in the prevalence of anti-government messages in the propaganda (just watch Fox News for 20 minutes). And we get to choose to what degree we expose ourselves to such propaganda.

The fact that it costs millions/billions to even gain any real access to the whole election process to begin with, and that you much have the blessing of at least a decent section of the wealthy business elite. For starters..

Yes, it’s a serious problem but it’s not as though it’s anything new. It’s pretty much an inevitable result of a laissez-faire approach to campaign financing in a capitalist society. While it does skew the political playing field towards the rich, assuming that this completely subverts democracy seems to assume that “the rich” have absolutely no interests in common with anyone else and that they’re in lock-step with the interests of one another — both of which are clearly false. (For the record, I’d love to find a solution to this but I think it would require a less apathetic and better-informed voting public.)

Note that the relative political power of unions — as well as the fervor with which Republicans are trying to gut unions — demonstrates that political organization among the less-than-wealthy does have a real effect. In fact, your other cited problem with US democracy, voter suppression, also demonstrates that ordinary citizens do have influence in our political system — otherwise voter suppression would be unnecessary. You can’t have it both ways.

I don’t think people in the US have much argument that they don’t have a massive propaganda machine, or that externalizing the fascists *out there* doesn’t help make us more comfortable pretending the fascists *in here* don’t exist.

Yet that doesn’t really mean Putin should be off the hook either, does it?

From my view, I was just describing the events in the war, as reported, but not reported all together like I put it.

I do not say that Putin, or any other leaders, do not do things leaders do. We’re all sinners.

But the billions spent on the American system of propaganda has been very effective at
achieving it’s objectives, and guiding mainstream perception of true history where filtering out the events Putin is responding very normally to, which are then characterized as him being evil, when he is just responding tit for tat, and most are not seeing what his acts are in response to.

Gordon – while I can’t say I entirely agree with most of your points, I do like that you posted them here in a well written comment that has sparked an interesting & civil discussion.

I do agree with your sentiment that the United States is much less democratic that many of us like to think, and that we do have our own set of oligarchs. But I just cannot agree with any direct comparison between the U.S. and Russia. Russia has never really had a tradition of elected representation, at least at the national level. Just as one example, recall that until Alexander II freed them 1861 most Russian peasants were serfs – they were owned by the nobility, factories or the state. (The US of course had slavery, but again, in a very different form.) There are just too many differences to make a direct comparison between the U.S. and Russia.

As internet discussions go, I see nothing hostile at all…spirited maybe, but nothing more than that.

Thank you for providing the link. I now understand better how dissimilar the incident you refer to and the Russian Treason laws are. Export of restricted hardware vs. providing help to an international organization. Falsification of documents vs. contact with foreigners. Very interesting.

Blimey pot meet kettle. Bribery and corruption is rife in the US – it’s just a little more subtle than the days of the mobsters a generation ago. US elections don’t get a high rating from international observers either with huge suspicions of rigged voting.

“A little more subtle”? We have a two-centuries history of good-faith capitalism and decent if not good governance. While there is certainly corruption I find it rather hard to believe that corruption in the US is as widespread as in a country whose institutions of commerce and government only go back two decades — to a time when Russia’s economy was very obviously lawless and run by the mafia.

Can you provide any quantitative measures of corruption or “rigged voting” such that the US and Russia can be meaningfully compared along these lines or do I just have to take your word for it that they’re equally bad?

1. Please provide evidence that US elections are rigged or sham elections. Justify the naked assertion that the US is no more democratic than Russia.
2. Even assuming it’s true that US is no more democratic than Russia, note that many of us routinely dislike and criticize our elected leaders and both mock and bewail those Americans who are slavishly devoted to any particular president. I’d have a negative reaction to a video of a half-bright Obama fan gushing about how amazing he is as much as I do to this.

1) I don’t think the US is less democratic than Russia
2) Having said that, it is enough of a rickety glass house that overtly smug comments about Russia should be laughed at / challenged.

Higher up GOP officials in Florida recently flat out admitted that voter suppression was the sole reason for their recent changes to election policy. So here you have officials admitting that they were deliberately trying to hinder people from engaging in their right to vote and to subvert the democratic process. You think anybody will go to jail?

No I don’t. Look, it’s not like I don’t engage in a fair amount of America bashing myself. And I agree that smug comments about Russia from USians should be challenged — on the basis that we should have more pride than to be content to be better than some notional competitor (rather than actually, you know, good). On the other hand, I also think assertions of parity between Russia and the US should likewise be challenged if no quantitative argument is being made. This thread is full of assertions that the US is “just as bad” as Russia without any explication of what is meant. That’s substance-free America bashing. I like my America bashing with some substance.

Yes, voter suppression is a problem in the US. Unless you talk to conservatives in which case voter fraud is a serious problem (Thanksgiving w/ family was a trip in this respect). Is it a less serious problem in Russia? Are there perhaps even more serious problems with elections in Russia that aren’t being mentioned despite the assertions of parity between the two?

Somebody mentioned “tone” above, and I’d say that some of the ‘take a look in the mirror’ comments were addressed at extremely smug comments by Americans/Westerners. For better or worse they come across as hypocritical or ill informed.

Dave Lloyd’s comment was dead on, and Gordon Stark’s had a lot of truth in it as well regarding Western propaganda. They showed mercy and didn’t even mention the 2000 Presidential “election” either..

Again, I think assertions like Dave Lloyd’s of parity between corruption in the US and Russia are meaningless and most likely hyperbolic in the absence of any quantification of corruption in the two countries. Substance-free. “Pot meet kettle” might be fair, but that’s only because I don’t think this phrase suggests absolute parity but points out willful blindness to one’s own flaws. That’s fine and valuable to point out.

In my personal opinion, lefties dramatically overstate the corruption involved in the 2000 election. I can understand this given the dire consequences, but ultimately it was just a close race that Gore happened to lose. Both parties play games in situations like that and the Republicans came out on top in that instance. Had Obama lost the popular vote and had the race come down to a few thousand votes in a heavily contested state I would prefer a situation in which Republicans nonetheless acknowledge the outcome and the presidency of Obama. Perhaps that’s a pipe dream seeing as Republicans already routinely challenge the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency, but I’d prefer not to be a hypocrite myself by claiming that close races only count when my guy wins.